Westchester pitches new locations for General Electric

ALBANY — Officials in Westchester County have been actively identifying — and pitching — potential sites for a relocation of General Electric's Connecticut-based headquarters.

“We're open for business and we would love to have GE here, and we wanted to make sure that they know what we have to offer,” said Ned McCormack, a spokesman for Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino. “Now that this has been out there for a couple of weeks, there's a couple of places that seem to be in play.”

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POLITICO New York reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited the industrial conglomerate's C-suite in Fairfield, Connecticut on July 30. A GE spokesman said the company — which employs 8,800 people in New York and was incorporated in Schenectady — began exploring other locations for its headquarters after Connecticut lawmakers changed the state's corporate tax code.

One potential New York site is in Somers, just across the Muscoot Reservoir from Katonah, that was once the headquarters of Pepsi Bottling Group, which merged with PepsiCo. The complex is adjacent to I-684, and approximately 35 miles from Fairfield. It is nine stories tall and contains 540,000 square feet on a campus of roughly 200 acres. It was purchased in April by a company linked to Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire, for $87 million.

Somers supervisor Rick Morrissey said he was “actively pursuing” General Electric and had reached out to county and state officials, including the office of State Sen. Terrence Murphy.

“If Connecticut is making it harder to do business in their state, we're more than happy to offer GE some incentives as a town, as a county, as a state,” Morrissey said. “I would hope that the Pepsi building would be given some consideration.”

McCormack said the county was also pitching sites in Yonkers, Armonk and White Plains.

“Our real estate is roughly half the cost of New York City, with a great quality of life,” he said. “A lot of these executives live in Fairfield, so Armonk and Somers become fairly easy.”